Looking to buy Twitter Followers? Or maybe followers onFacebook, Instagram or another social network? Let me ask you…What’s more important, 10,000 fans or followers, or 100 who will actually engage with you?

It seems this question isn’t asked too often by a number of people running social media channels who opt to buy their followers in order to boost their numbers.

Let’s be honest for minute, who hasn’t wanted to boost the number of followers or fans they have? Silicon Valley marketing executive, Guy Kawasaki, famously said…

I’d love to disagree with him, but I honestly believe he’s right. Who doesn’t want to have more followers?

I remember taking the decision to create a new Twitter account solely for my business, and having to start from scratch. It was easy to try and compare the number of followers I had with others in my field and get depressed.

Numbers Aren’t Everything.

But… not all metrics are the same.

In the social media/marketing/IT world we are very fond of data. I’ve said numbers aren’t everything, but more true to the point is that some numbers are important and some numbers are not. While I do agree having a large number of followers looks good (and I’d be lying if I wasn’t proud by the fact that I’ve grown my following to over 50,000 on Twitter), there are other metrics that I feel are more useful and important. How about…

How many people engage with you on a regular basis

How many Twitter lists people have added you to

Shock horror- how many leads and sales social media is driving!

How much traffic to your website your social efforts are driving

Let’s stop looking at the number of fans and followers and look at the things that matter!

However, you’ve stumbled across this article, so you are curious aren’t you?

How to Buy your Followers

There are plenty of services out there which claim to boost your numbers. Many say they can boost your numbers quickly. Some services offer to do this for free and some require payment. There are a number of different methods that they can employ.

Aggressive Following Technique. (Twitter Only)By following a large number of people each day, waiting for them to follow you, then unfollow those who don’t follow you back it is possible to artificially increase your followers very quickly. This goes against Twitter’s terms and conditions and so is definitely to be avoided. There is nothing wrong with following or unfollowing a large number of people every now and again, but if Twitter think you are aggressively trying to increase your followers by follower/unfollower churn methods, you are likely to get your account suspended. Note- a service will need you to give permission for it to access your Twitter account in order to follow Twitter accounts

Zombie Account Following. (Facebook & Twitter) By paying a 3rd party you can get 100s, 1000s of even 10,000s of followers or likes. Generally each supplier has a database of twitter or Facebook “zombie” accounts that they can use to follow or like you. These are usually completely inactive accounts, sometimes with random names with jumbled up letters and numbers.

Why is Buying Followers so Bad?

#1 Low Engagement / Low Edgerank Score.

When you buy followers or fans, you aren’t getting people who are interested or willing to engage with you. You are merely buying numbers. After paying for followers/fans or engaging in aggressive follower churn, you are likely to get a large number of fake accounts amongst your number. Blogger, Zach Bussey, decided to do an experiment and create a new Twitter account and buy some followers. Over night the number of followers of his new Twitter account increased to a whopping 26,000! It got interesting when he analysed the results and looked at the Twitter accounts that these fake accounts followed. Doing this enabled him to have a good guess on other people who had paid for followers!

#2 You end up spamming your followers.

This isn’t always the case, but some even more evil Twitter Follower services ask to access your Twitter account to send out multiple messages advertising their way of increasing people’s followers. This is just going to annoy your followers and give you a bad name, which brings me on to…

#3 Loss of Integrity and Reputation.

In this post-modern (or post-post-modern!) world we live in, morality is perhaps more difficult to define since everyone has a different view of what morality is. However, it is fair to say that people see buying followers as a rather immoral thing to do. People view it as you trying to appear more popular than you are and doing it by dodgy means. People may not know that you’ve bought followers, but going from 30 followers or likes to 30,000 in the space of a couple of days is bound to get people suspicious, and then your integrity and reputation could well be in tatters.

#4 You’ll get found out!

In fact a lot of people are currently getting found out. It is fairly easy to find out the names of people who are being followed by fake accounts as I mentioned in the first point. However, a new tool on the block is making it even easier. The Fake Followers Check check from Status people analyses your followers to see how many are fake. The interesting thing is you can do the analysis on other accounts too.

There are some Victims…

It is an important point that not everyone who has a large number of fake followers has paid for them. Ryan Tracey commented on a post I wrote last year called “Do you know the Twitter Limits” to say that he was the victim of 24,000 fake accounts following him. To read more on the subject you can read his blog post about him “being bot-bombed“. Unfortunately there isn’t a huge amount you can do about this apart from blocking or reporting each account individually or using a 3rd party tool such as TwitBlock. TwitBlock analyses your account for spam, zombie or bot accounts and lets you block or report them. Unfortunately it doesn’t let you do this in bulk, but this is rather unsurprising since I am pretty sure it goes against Twitter’s terms and conditions. There are tools that allow you to bulk unfollow, such as Manage Flitter*, but none that I know of that allow you to bulk block. If you know of any, please let me know in the comments.

Measure Engagement Not Follower Count

So what is the moral of this story? Well apart from it not being moral to buy your followers and having the possibility of having your account suspended or deleted, the number of followers you have really isn’t that important. Let’s make an effort not to play the numbers game and be impressed with the number of followers or likes some business has. Work on building a community of people who are interested in you or your product/service. You will most certainly reap the benefits if you do. There are lots of ways to help you do this, including tools such as Commun.it*.

How to Grow your Followers the Right Way

I’ve explained why buying followers is bad (unless you are paying for Facebook or Twitter advertising to boost your followers), so how can you grow your followers the right way?

By providing value to people, that’s how! And… by finding relevant people to follow or are likely to follow you back and engage with you.

ManageFlitter allows you to manage your Twitter followers and community in a very powerful way. They have a free version, but if you are going to get the most out of this tool, you’ll have to pay. It’s very reasonably priced (from $12 per month) and it’s going to help you grow your Twitter followers very effectively. I use their power mode to find relevant people to follow- ones that are likely to engage with me and hopefully follow me back. Remember, as well as growing your followers, wouldn’t it also be good to build strong relationships with relevant people, or get more leads?

With the power mode, I can follow the Twitter accounts that an influential and relevant person in my niche follows. I can then filter this list to only include accounts…

that I’m not following

who don’t currently follow me

who are active (i.e. they’ve Tweeted at least once in the past 30 days)

who have bothered to create a profile picture on their Twitter profile

who don’t have a protected (i.e. private) account

who are not in my “never unfollow” or “never follow” lists

who I’ve never followed before

who are unlikely to be spam accounts

who have over a certain number of followers themselves

and more!

You can then go through and quickly follow Twitter accounts that look promising. In many cases they’ll follow you back.

Every so often, I’d advise to do another search using ManageFlitter to see who hasn’t followed you back in the past 30 days. Don’t just unfollow them all though! Go through and add accounts that really add value to your “never unfollow” account so you never unfollow them, but do unfollow accounts who have never bothered to engage with you or follow you back- if it makes sense to do so.

Agora Pulse is a powerful social media management tool that helps with posting and scheduling your content, reporting and segmenting your audience to show you the most important people- the ones who support and engage with you the most. Agora Pulse integrates with Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. The reason I am recommending it here is because it will help you be much more productive and effective with your social engagements. Agora Pulse is kind of like a social inbox. You can quickly and easily go through all your Facebook, Twitter and Instagram mentions and comments and get down to inbox zero. If you want to grow your audience, then engagement is key. Don’t be a social media guru and be a one-way communication machine!

As well as helping with engagement, Agora Pulse can show you the top people in your community-

Engaged (people who have mentioned and commented in the past 30 days)

Ambassador (people who have retweeted or linked to your website in the past 30 days)

Influencer (someone who is retweeted more than 20 times in the past 30 days)

Building relationships with these people will expand your reach and help to grow your followers.

What the * means above…

If a link has an asterisk by it, it means it is an affiliate link and generates a little income for the site. If you end up signing up for the service and paying it may result in a small proportion going towards the upkeep of this site. You shouldn’t notice any difference in the sign up process.

The editorial line is NEVER impacted by these links. I will only ever recommend a product or service if I think it is worth recommending! If a product or service does not have an affiliate scheme, then we will still include it in the same way.

In the interests of transparency, here are the non-affiliate links which will not help iag.me:

Ian is a Confident Live Marketing Coach and founder of Seriously Social. He’s an international speaker, trainer, teacher, web developer and consultant. He has a passion for making the techno-babble of live video and social media marketing easy to understand. Ian is co-founder of Select Performers – a family run web agency. As well as being a geek, husband, and dad to two kids, Ian is also a professional singer and lives near Manchester in the UK. Find out more

The Seriously Social Community

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A old friend of mine, earns his money on Instagram as a photographer. He get’s free trips all around the world, but he clearly buys followers. Should i warn these companies or not.

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I can’t agree with your suggestions about the paid followers are futile. Is your saying true? that means every people don’t attempt the task can be very easier. I strictly objected to the loss of reputation within a couple of days. It has many options to buy the followers with partial or semi-partial followers, likes from the targeted count. Then you purchase the considerable amount and not buying a whole. In addition to, nobody gets suspicious and no one has to fall down your follower’s belief within a short span.

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I wouldn’t say that buying followers is futile. In fact, buying followers from certain places will increase the number of followers greatly. But, buying followers goers against Instagram and Twitter’s terms of service. I think buying followers also doesn’t give a good impression – particularly if you get found it. Personally, I don’t want to go there. I think we can disagree with the moral argument, but the fact that it goes against the terms of service is what it is.

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1 year ago

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Christine

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Hi Christine, It really depends on the method the place you’re buying followers uses to add followers. If they need access to your IG username and password (something you should never give a 3rd party anyway), your account could be open to abuse. But the big reason for not buying followers is because it is against Instagram’s terms, and if they find out, you could find your

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I think Mostly all popular profile buy followers because very hard work to gain real 500k-millions followers on any profile this reason people not focus on real or fake only focus on followers quantity

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I’m not sure most popular profiles buy followers, but I am going to assume many do. Instrgram needs to sort themselves out because it’s just too easy to game the system.

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Your reasons are valid but. It’s Depend on your mind. if you have time and interest then you can get real followers with some effort. but if you have no time then you can buy followers and likes from a trusted person. you

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Well, there are lots of ways to look at this. You can personally be perfectly fine with buying followers, or you may think it’s the worst thing ever. Whichever way you look at it, buying followers goes against the terms of the social networks and could get you banned. If you’re ok with that risk, then fine.

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1 year ago

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Reynolds

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I did my own case study with few of my brand new Instagram accounts and found out the hard way. Even with same quality contents the accounts with no outside boosts (engagement and followers), they struggled a lot to compete with the ones I did use outside boosts. It’s just human nature, we see a bigger following and engagement, we tend to follow them. Later on, even when I dropped quality on my account with boosts and increased content quality for the real account, the difference still stayed. Of course, engagement increased for the real account. Now you may ask… Read more »

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Hi, thanks for sharing your experiment – very interesting. However, using auto-like services or buying followers does three things – firstly it goes against Instagram terms and conditions. They are starting to crack down a lot more on automation behaviour that goes against their terms. So, secondly, you could find that your account gets suspended. Thirdly, it just makes Instagram a horrible place to be. I got so many spammy comments, follows from fake accounts, and fake likes. It just makes Instagram far less attractive to be on.

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2 years ago

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Alee

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The best article… I review IG profiles for brands, and most are fake, they now DRIP FEED followers in a few hundred a day to just make it look legit, but then all the accounts are fake ones. Literally scroll through them and almost all accounts are hispanic teens with up to 15-20 posts. I hope people start picking up on this when they book influencers. All I can say is we just give out all the things we now and tell them to use socialblade.com to look at the growth and they’ll see most buy 90% of their following… Read more »

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2 years ago

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mary

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Initially, I’d used hashtags and follow for follow, like for like… But I passed to promotion bots several months ago. First it was instagress.com unfortunately it was closed. Then I found instanobel.com . I got more than 200 followers per day. It’s satisfies me))))))))

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Instagram is getting really hot on closing down tools such as these, and you could find your account gets suspended. Instagram does not allow tools like this to auto follow and spam. Be careful!

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I bought 5k Followers on Instagram but after few days these followers lost. then I try real strategies after reading your post now I have real and active followers. Can you suggest me best Instagram tool that I could increase my followers.

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I intensely remorse buying followers for Instagram. Nowhere am I with 10k followers and half a dozen likes on each new post. It is very trying and I wish there was a way to. Opposite that.

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2 years ago

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LELA

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Hello Ian, i bought 2000 followers, but I think Instagram people found it out and removed it from my account (busines profile for selling handmade product), I ended up with around 302 followers but every time the number goes down and down especially when I am getting new real followers. Every time I get like 4-5 new followers the number goes down by 20-30 followers. Now i only have 178 real followers, do you think they do penalize me? Thank you

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Most of the times users know they are buying fake followers but they still do. At the end of the day atleast numbers is all that matters. Increase followers means more popularity, that’s what younger generation seems to be chasing now.

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Yes, I think you are right. People are just focused on the number of followers stats. It doesn’t matter that they might be fake. But, long term this is not a good strategy. If you want an audience that actually care about your content and want to engage, then growing your audience the right way is the only way.

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You described all the cons of buying followers for any social media profile. You should also make a post where you could tell people about the pros of buying twitter followers. Buying some followers can help people to get more followers through all over the social networks.

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Well, the advantages of buying followers are that you can get a large number of followers fast. This increases your vanity stats quickly which can be great for social proof. But this is very much in the short term. The reasons I give in this article really go against ever buying followers. While you might get a good follower number in the meantime, it could hurt your brand but more importantly, it is against the terms and conditions of Instagram and Twitter. You might not agree with those terms and you might not feel bad about breaking the rules, but… Read more »

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I’ve lost work because I don’t have 10k followers, so it’s tempting. I work in fashion industry and now social media followers is vital to success.

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Oh wow, that is so depressing. I would have thought in this day and age businesses, influencers, businesses, and industries would see that influence and success comes from influence and engagement and not follower numbers. You can have 10,000 spammy followers or 100 super fans. Give me 100 super fans any time over than 10,000 spammy followers. The problem is that the number of followers is an obvious metric that people can see. But it is a little meaningless. In order to find meaningful statistics you need to do a bit of work and see how engaged the person’s community… Read more »

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I have an idea! Why don’t we all Just follow each other? Maybe at least we can get a good number of all real followers who understand the urge to do so. I am afraid of buying followers but I am not afraid of asking to work together in gaining followers! @laraalcantara what do you say guys?

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Thanks, Lara, what you say makes a lot of sense. I suppose, everyone has different feelings and strategies with this one. I can’t possibly follow everyone who follows me, but I do try and follow people who follow me who are relevant. Some people just follow you in order to get you to follow them back. They’re not interested in anything other than that, and they’re in a completely different industry with content that isn’t of interest. So, it really depends. But other than that, yes, following back is great!

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I have personally seen clients benefit from using a few select pay for twitter services. So I disagree with some points in your article. For instance numbers are almost everything with twitter since the average lifespan of a tweet is 18 minutes. You need relevancy and consistency in order to stay on top of your game with twitter. Some pay for services help you accomplish this since most of us do not have the extra time to give twitter the attention it deserves on a daily basis.

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Hi Stephen. Thanks for your comments and feel free to disagree. It’s a controversial topic and I know people will be on both sides of the fence (or even sitting on the fence) when it comes to buying followers. I think there is no question that some people will benefit, at least in the short term, when buying followers. But no matter what people think, buying followers goes against Twitter’s terms and conditions AND it can hurt trust and integrity. The number of followers you have does help to a degree with social proof. I’ve now got over 50,000 followers,… Read more »

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What about if your a real customer and before buying from the business you decide to check out their social media accounts. You then notice that they have 5 likes or less, would this not turn people away? Perhaps in this scenario having a bunch of fake ‘likes’ is not necessarily a bad idea as it would give the impression that you are established/ large and therefore trustworthy? Thank you for the the post, Ryan

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Hi Ryan, You make a really good point. I can definitely see the case for a business wanting to purchase followers to give a better social proof. Whether we like it or not, on one level, the number of followers an account has does matter, If the account has very few followers, it does usually create a negative impression. It shouldn’t, but it does. I liken it to restaurants… if you were looking to eat at a restaurant and you saw two really good ones serving similar food – one is empty and one is nearly full… which one would… Read more »

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Thanks for the reply Ian, I agree, in the end, honesty is the best policy.

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Thats very true i am also not in favour of selling or buying any social media services but one should learn how to use it , one should take youtube training that how to make money from it.

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2 years ago

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Wendy

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I sometimes get frustrated that those who bought followers are getting better collaborations than I am…how can companies not see it?!? The followers lists are 90% made out of accounts without profile photos… So are the likes list… But I feel I am the only one checking this and when I tell the other bloggers about it. They just think I care too much about what the others are doing… That’s all…

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I totally get you. I think people and companies do see it. But they’re not always going to say! It’s difficult to prove that people bought followers, although it can look pretty obvious. Integrity and honesty is everything to me – particularly as I am playing the long game.

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2 years ago

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Emma

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But if it’s just faster and finds real followers like zen-promo.com? I say that because I bought followers on instagram but it’s fine as I think. I don’t need to spend hours following back, liking and other stuff to get them. It’s my opinion but it’s up to you to agree with me

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There are many services like the one you mention. Unfortunately, they go against Instagram’s terms and conditions, and I have heard from many who have had their accounts suspended as a result. Auto liking and commenting is also just spam in my book and very annoying for the average Instagram user. I get followed and had comments liked and commented with low-quality comments and it is very frustrating.

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2 years ago

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R.c

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I deeply regret buying followers for ig. Now.here I am with 25k followers and half a dozen likes on each new post. It is very embarrassing and I wish there was a way to.reverse that.

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Thanks for sharing that. You make a really interesting point. The only way, is to block them all, but that would require a huge amount of work.

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I’ve lost work because I don’t have 10k followers, so it’s tempting. I work in fashion industry and now social media followers is vital to success.

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Wow, really? That’s awful to lose work based on the number of followers you have. I find that hard to understand. The number of followers is such a superficial statistic, but yes, it does act as a form of social proof. There is no quick and easy way to boost your followers, unless you want to be a naughty boy and buy them. However, if you combine sharing high quality content with following the right kind of people who are likely to follow you back, you will definitely grow your followers.

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thanks for share useful tricks

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2 years ago

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Manish Pandey

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Glad to hear, Babak!

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2 years ago

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John

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Haha I thought U were genuine at the start When U talked about other tools helping that when I knew this is fake

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Hi, John. Not quite sure what you mean? I really do try and go out way to be genuine and helpful in my articles, so I’m sorry you don’t think I am being genuine. What do you mean by fake? As I mention in the article growing right kind of followers the right way happens… providing value to people,… And… by finding relevant people to follow or are likely to follow you back and engage with you. Tools will never do that on their own. Tools only make it easier and help save you time, but they should never replace… Read more »

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2 years ago

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Andy

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I know what he means, I was hoping for a strategy at the end there, not a list of tools or vague advice; more specifics about HOW to provide value or HOW to engage with those relevant people. Everyone “knows” you are supposed to provide value but HOW to do it is the hard part. Those tools can’t really answer the question either, unless you know how to use them for your specific strategy.

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Hi Andy, thanks for your constructive criticism. I do appreciate it. Tools are only part of the story when it comes to growing followers, but I wanted to list some simple ways that can make the job easier. But, that’s not the job of this article. The main point of this article is why buying fake followers is a bad idea. I really do need to write another article on how to grow your followers the right way. That would need to be a detailed article, because there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution here. I think a lot of people “know”… Read more »

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2 years ago

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Jane

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Great article. I came across this article by searching “what is the point of buying followers?” as I’m being followed on twitter by these brokers(sellers?). As informative as this article was cautioning against it.Still not sure what buying followings achieves.

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Thanks, Jane. Well, buying followers is a quick way to boost the vanity statistics. A high number of followers can boost social proof in a superficial way. But at the end of the day, it can hurt your integrity and brand.

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Thank for article! Why and for what purposes need more followers everyone decides for himself! I think that in a small number of followers required for beginners.

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2 years ago

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Anonymous

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Hiya,

I’ve recently had a social media PR company start working for me, and I wanted to know how I could secretly find out if they are doing the whole ‘buying fake followers’ etc.. What’s the best way to go about it?! I’ve tried doing audits but don’t know if they are okay to use?

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Hi. Great question. There are a number of ways you could do this. First of all, by tracking the number of followers they have over time. If they suddenly get a big influx of new followers, you have to ask the question why. You could use Twitter Counter to track the followers they have (or the analytics tab in Manage Flitter). If you see a big spike, look at the Tweets on that day. Do they warrant a big spike in numbers? The other way, is to look at their followers and see how many of them appear spammy or… Read more »

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Nice post. The only reason I would buy followers is to avoid the headache and hassle of the 10% follower/follow rule. If you fill up your Twitter accounts in the first week, and buy (let’s say 2,000 followers) using a drip feed method to make it look more natural so that you get a faster follow back ratio in the beginning, what is so unethical about this? Sure, 2,000 people may not be interested in your content, but there are still ways to buy real followers. And plus, the people you target after you buy the followers are what matter.… Read more »

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Hi Weston. I definitely see where you are coming from. Buying followers to break through the follower/follow rule makes sense from one point of view. In my view, it is unethical because it breaks the terms and conditions of the social networks. They outlaw this practice. You may not agree with the rule, but it is a rule nonetheless. I can see why buying followers with the reasons you give can be justified, but it’s still buying followers, and it isn’t something I would personally recommend. Ian

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2 years ago

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Ben Coyle

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I understand that but for example, I use program like zen-promo.com that finds real people in my own city who are interested in things like I do in my account. I think it’s absolutely fine

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Hi Ben, you have to be really careful with using tools such as the one you mentioned. Automatically following, unfollowing and liking on Instagram go against their terms and conditions. I’ve not tried the one you mentioned, but similar services ask for your Instagram login credentials which is a big no-no from a security point of view. It also can mean Instagram can suspend your account. In fact, that’s something that has happened to users in the past. It’s just not something I would recommend.

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I really like the engagement Part i feel like egagement is the only way you can really gain Followers and likes

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Totally agree, James. Engagement and building relationships is the best way to grow your audience.

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Lot of different ways to grow twitter following, buying is just one of them. I guess few thousands won’t hurt that much and would ignite others.

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Well, I suppose you could argue that buying a few thousand followers may not be so noticeable. However, it’s still buying followers and I wouldn’t be comfortable with that.

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Captions and hashtag go hand in hand when it comes to popularity on Instagram. Thinking of a caption for a picture is a difficult task and everybody has come across this problem. So the first thing is while writing a caption for the picture make it relevant and cool. First think which types of caption you need for example – general, love, funny, meaningful etc. Some of the amazing captions which I have seen on Instagram I myself never feel that I’m sexy. If people call me cute, I am happier/ if we could only turn back time/ With You,… Read more »

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These facts are right but there are some reasons due to which people buy Twitter followers or other social followers. These are 1- Short time to use social media 2-Do not have big community at the start 3-Do not have unique content 4-Desire of more followers in short time etc.

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Yes, all good reasons. However, I still feel it’s not worth it. Reputation is everything in my opinion.

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Glad you found it useful! Ian

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2 years ago

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Amy

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I agree that the real 100ins fans better than 1000 false ins fans for marketing effect, but instagram fans much to increase popularity, make your content easier to see, so buy some ins fans is good, I also bought through the ins followers, such as Forever Social Marketing

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Yes, Amy, I see where you are coming from. The problem is that buying followers like that goes against Instagram’s terms and could jeopardise your account. I also want to make sure my likes are organic and genuine. My integrity is important to me. Trust is everything.

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2 years ago

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Evan

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But you can buy services that will find followers that interested in your art or business. For example zen-promo.com attracts users, but only interested ones will follow you. So you can get many active users this way.

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Thanks, Evan. Yes, there are services like that. I personally use my own system with Manageflitter. But, I think the main difference is that with these tools you have control over the people you follow – and they are REAL people. What I don’t want to go for are services that automate accounts following you.

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Hi Ian, I totally agree with you on this one, I rather have 100 real followers than 1000 fake ones. It is risky for your account and you can lose them at any time if Instagram bans those follower accounts. There is only one way of buying followers and it is via shoutouts. But that’s only my 2 cents

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Thanks, Steve. Glad you agree with me on this. I value my Twitter account too much to play around with this. And more importantly I want real followers who are interested in what I have to say. It’s the same with my Instagram account. Ian

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great advice

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3 years ago

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Darth Vader

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There is actually some service that provides folowers that will comment and like your stuff. They’re authomatic, but they look very real (they comment things like “nice” or “love it!” so they never say the wrong thing, haha) . I don’t remember its name, look it up on Google. I hope this helps someone. But make sure it’s legal and everything Sorry for my English, Darth Vader

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Hi Darth, Interesting. I’ve come across a similar service for Instagram called Instagress, and I know there are similar facilities for Twitter. The issue is that all of these break Twitter’s and Instagram’s terms of services. There is good and bad automation, and these stray over to the dark side. But, at the end of the day, it’s a case of knowing the risks and making a decision.

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3 years ago

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Sarah J

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Hmmmm interesting article Ian… I actually recently bought some followers from here. I’m still undecided whether they’re worth the investment, I’m just hoping they won’t do me any harm now… Lol but I guess we’ll see.

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Interesting post. I like the way in which you are writing. My best way to increase followers is to create killer profile, bio, asking questions and mentioning other followers

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Thanks. Love your points. A killer profile and bio are so important. Creating value and engaging with people also very important!

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3 years ago

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Andie

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Hello Ian, I really like your article, sorry if my English is not perfect, I hope that you can understand. I have a question, I’m working in my followers on Instagram, if I follow and unfollow people, they are going to block my account? For me that is an organic way but I didn’t know that Twitter for example can give you a penalty for this. Thank you

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Great question. It really depends on how aggressively you do it. My feeling is that Instagram doesn’t monitor things quite as heavily as other platforms so you might be able to get away with it. However, I think having a slower more organic approach is better long term. Twitter certainly disallow “aggressive follow/unfollow churn”, and I do know people who have had their account suspended as a result of doing this. Personally, I tend to wait 20-30 days before unfollowing someone. I like to give them a chance and see if I like their content before unfollowing them. Twitter have… Read more »

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3 years ago

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Mechell

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Great article. What app do you recommend to schedule postings for Instagram?

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Thanks, Mechell. I highly recommend Later (formally called Latergramme). It’s robust, easy to use and works well. Let me know what you think. Ian

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3 years ago

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Andie suu

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Hello Ian! I really like your article! Sorry if my English is not perfect, I hope you can understand. I have a question, I’m working in my Instagram account, but for me follow and unfollow is a organic way too win followers, do you now if Instagram can block me for this? Thank you!

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Hi Andie, are you asking whether Instagram could block you for aggressively following and unfollowing people in order to build up a large number of followers? The answer is “possibly”, although you could get away with it. There are plenty of accounts with a large number of followers who seem to have got away with using this technique. However, you need to ask yourself, is it worth it? I prefer a slow growth approach. Following and unfollowing is fine, but I think you need to wait a while before you unfollow people otherwise it just looks a little spammy.

Ian

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3 years ago

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Melissa

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To be honest I am thinking of buying followers I have organically 1350 followers but it seems that I stuck there, I haven’t been getting more followers in months so as a blogger it doesn’t look good. However I would not buy 20.000 as is not realistic but I would consider buying 500-800 as it seems more realistic.

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Hi Melissa, I totally understand. I think getting the first 2,000 or so followers is the most difficult and it can be very tempting to take the quick option. You could look at buying enough followers to break the 2,000 barrier, but I still would recommend against it. I’d like to ask what your current strategy is. I’m sure you are already doing some of these, but in case it helps others… 1) Make sure you are regularly tweeting high quality content that is likely to resonate with your potential audience. 2) Make sure you engage with your current community.… Read more »

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Hi Ian, cheers for this great article. You gave so many great reasons why one should avoid buying followers but also nice tools to grow their fans and their engagement. Very valuable stuff, I have bookmarked this post so that I share it with clients who ask me how to buy followers…

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I really wonder is it not known to twitter that this kind of purchase is going on. Is it not bad for twitter..

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I very much agree. Twitter does know about this, but they don’t have the resources to deal with it- or possibly more truthfully they’re just turning a blind eye. It is bad for Twitter and they need to sort it out- now more than ever. However until they plough resources in to this, the problem is only going to get worse.

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I agree with the article fully, though many things are good.

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3 years ago

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About Ian

Ian is the founder of the Confident Live Marketing Academy and helps entrepreneurs to level up their impact, authority and profits by using live video confidently. Seriously Social is a blog focussed on live video and social media tools. He’s an international speaker, trainer, teacher and consultant.